Bridging the Gap Festival was created to bridge the gap between jazz music and dance – two forms that share the same roots and origins but are rarely together in festival spaces. Jones collaborated jazz dance choreographers/educators Brandi Coleman of SMU (Dallas, TX), Kimberley Cooper Artistic Director for Decidedly Jazz Danceworks (Calgary, AB), and Lindsay Guarino SRU (Newport , RI), with whom he co-edited “Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics in the Twenty First Century.”
Bridging the Gap Festival brought together jazz musicians and dancers from across the United States and Canada in performances, master classes, and panel discussions, and featured an evening of premiered works created to the music compositions of Grammy ® winning artists Julius Rodriguez. Rodriguez’s band performed live with the dancers as did the Marcus Grant Trio who also accompanied the dancers on their performance at the Newport Jazz Festival.